The Discipleship

The title Sikh, the Disciple, was first given to us by Guru Nanak. We were mere corpses, he poured life into us. We were thus created anew by His love of us. He made us alive with our out-drawn love of Him and left us free. He freed us from the hatred of caste, colour and creed. He made us look straight at the sky towards the Infinite, he made us look upon the sun and the moon and the stars as our kith and kin. He did knit us with the Universe and he wove the design of the Infinite into the texture of our soul. He gave us then the universal music to sing; birds and animals to be our confidants, woods and rivers and hills to sing with us. This world that sat like a nightmare on us was thrown away; the new world was laid open before our eyes in His vision. The veil was almost torn asunder and this spiritual universe of love was opened to our vision. And we were elevated from the valleys of darkness on to the sunlit heights. Peasants became poets by His touch. The enslaved womanhood was freed from its bondage o the soul. When the Ninth Guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur came to Amritsar, the priests shut the doors, against the Master. He turned his back on the Golden Temple, the brick and mortar, and bore away the true Golden Temple in his heart as a holy vision. The Golden Temple would have gone forever from Amritsar. But the Sikh ladies of Amritsar saw this danger. They, in their freedom, followed the Master and sang to Him, His hymns. He blessed them and blessed Amritsar. The Golden Temple was saved fro this poor earth of ours by the freed Sikh womanhood.

This is the plain history. Our history is of the soul, all its events are of the soul. All truth for us is personal. We have not to prove it, we have to stand witness to it in our soul. By the title Sikh, he linked us with Himself for ever. And we cannot tear ourselves away from Him. It would be misery for us if we turned our backs on Him.

Puran Singh

Taken from The Spirit Born People, published by Punjabi University, Patiala.